The Metaphors of Plague

The Metaphors of Plague

CHIU Shung-ming

Hong Kong and the whole world are facing the ferocity of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). The number of infected patients has been on the rise in the world, and the number of casualties is high. What's more, this plague is not only an infectious disease that harms the body, it may also cause collective emotional trauma to the masses of society. As we know, sometimes an emotional trauma is more terrifying than a physical one because it may bring a more profound negative impact to people such as loneliness, alienation, suspicion, depression, anxiety, helplessness, despair and other negative emotions. If certain political factors or ideologies, like the stigmatization of some diseases when they are turned into metaphors, are involved, the problem will be more serious. Faced with this predicament, what theological reflection can we make on this issue?

This article is divided into three parts. The first part discusses Susan Sontag's comments and critiques on the “illness as metaphor,” which aims to show that the general public (including Christians) may easily turn certain diseases into metaphors with negative connotations, and it then leads to the stigmatization of these diseases. Although Sontag criticized the “metaphor of disease,” she cannot deny that people always rely on metaphors to think and understand the world. Moreover, for Christians, the Bible is full of metaphors, which are significant for communicating the meanings of the truth. Actually the study of metaphor in theology becomes very popular in the theological circle. The second part of the article introduces the metaphorical theology of two theologians, Sallie McFague and Colin E. Gunton, which illustrates the important roles and functions of metaphor in theology from their perspectives. Finally, the third part analyzes a plague movie (Blindness) and a plague novel (La Peste, The Plague) and discusses the metaphorical meanings of plague.